How Does Howard Zinn Use Peaceful Resistance To The Government

The American playwright and social activist Howard Zinn once wrote, “Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.” Over the course of his life, Zinn authored many novels and attended numerous rallies in support of peaceful resistance, spreading the message of the freedoms that we as citizens of the United States of America hold – the rights to free speech, press, and religion, to name a few. It is his ideas regarding civil disobedience and his concept of dissent being the highest form of patriotism that I have always admired. It is because of Howard Zinn that I know peaceful resistance to laws does positively impact a free society.

In the true democracy that the government claims the United States to be, the people are in control. It is the public’s voice that is meant to be heard and the state of the union that is meant to be altered according to that voice. The power is meant to lie with the everyday American citizen and all of his or her brethren, not with Washington. After all, the Constitution, made effective in 1789, begins with the words “We the People,” not “We the Government.” It is this distinction that is supposed to elevate our nation, placing it above the countries around the rest of the world, and it is this power of the people that creates a better-functioning society.

As a part of “the people,” I am a firm believer in the ideas of acceptance,